


Origin Stories and Annual Issues

by Mortissimo



Series: ITDCAU [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Batman Fusion, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, During the 27 Years (IT), M/M, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:20:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24695158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mortissimo/pseuds/Mortissimo
Summary: Bits and pieces of the Losers' lives between enclownters, if Derry was in DC Comics and almost all of them ended up Batman villains.Takes place before "But Doctor[...]"
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: ITDCAU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1785373
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	1. JOKER #0

**Author's Note:**

> See end notes for explanation of warnings. 
> 
> I intend to add to this, probably, as the need to do so strikes me, and might change the order of the chapters as necessary. It is not in fact a complete work, but it's not going to be, so like. Yeah.

Richie doesn't want to be here. 

He doesn't want to be the one in this stupid phallic helmet—for fuck's sake it's even bright red. He doesn't want to be listening hard to the sounds of the plant around him for any variation, and hearing only his own ragged breathing echoing back at him, barely on this side of panicking. 

He doesn't want to be at the chemical plant in the first place, doesn't really understand what it is he'd gotten 'talked' into doing here, but he doesn't want to be doing it. Richie doesn't understand what there is that's worth stealing at Ace Chemicals, and he doesn't want to be there stealing it, but despite every single warning and joke he'd ever heard about borrowing money from the wrong people in Gotham, he sure as fuck had borrowed money from the wrong people in Gotham. 

Richie doesn't even really want to be in Gotham. When he'd dropped out of Berkeley with the insane idea of  _ making it big in the Big Apple _ , when he'd sold whatever he could to get a chain of bus tickets  _ almost all the way there _ , somehow he imagined the worst thing that might happen to him would be striking out in New York and having to go to his parents for money. It had never occurred to him that he'd never make it past New Jersey, and now look at him, dressed up like a vibrator at a black tie gala and listening intently into the night for the sounds of some kind of crime-fighting demon.

Well, no, not the literal crime-fighting Demon that used to live here, the other one. The new guy. The one in black. 

Out in the night, there's a  _ snap _ like the sound of a flag in the wind, and Richie freezes. It's the middle of a still, oppressively heavy summer, and the only thing moving Richie's stupid cape is his own trembling. He doesn't think he saw a flag flying in front of the plant, either.

Slowly, without turning his head, Richie rolls his eyes to one side, and—there. A patch of darkness darker than the rest, slowly unfolding into a taller and taller humanoid shape. 

That's It. 

Something connects in Richie's subconscious, some flash of the memory of danger that somehow bypasses his brain entirely and jerks his muscles into movement. 

The sound of the shot rings out before Richie realizes what he's done, and very slowly, the bat-creature lowers its spiky, winged arm. It's the dead, white eyes that shove Richie into movement, and all notion of fighting is replaced with a sudden, visceral  _ need _ to run. 

So run he does, gasping for air inside the world's worst helmet, dress shoes skidding on the grating. The gun in his hand is a dead weight, and he flings it behind him without looking, hears it land with a surprising  _ thud _ , not a clatter. 

But he doesn't have time to look. 

Richie makes it inside the building somehow, not the office where the others are probably making their ungrateful getaway, but the plant itself. Some animal part of him pushes him up the stairs, higher into the network of catwalks, something insisting he'll be safe if he can just stay  _ above _ . 

It's wrong. 

Richie skids to a stop almost too late, wrapping his hands around the railing at the sudden end of the catwalk with an  _ oof _ . For a brief, crazed moment, he considers jumping, but the vat of bubbling neon green  _ what-the-fuck-is-that _ quickly puts an end to that idea. Under his stupid fancy gloves, the railing gives an alarming creak, and Richie lets go. There hasn't been any sound of pursuit behind him, so maybe… 

Richie turns, finds himself abruptly inches away from that cold, dead stare, and throws himself backwards to get away from it. 

The railing gives way the moment his back touches it and for one long, horrible moment, Richie finds himself in freefall, before his flailing hand is caught in a grip of iron and he comes to a wrenching stop. It's all Richie can do to tear his eyes away from the roiling vat of green death below him, but he knows he didn't catch himself, and between vat and demon… 

Richie looks up at the bat creature, and completely against his will, snorts, because  _ it's just a fucking guy.  _ Sure, it's a guy in a really cool costume, but it's still just some guy in a suit, severely overestimating Richie's upper body strength as he growls for Richie to pull himself up. It's not the time or the place, but the situation is just so absurd that Richie can't help himself, even as he struggles to comply.

"This has got to be some kind of fucking–" Richie and the bat-guy both fall silent at the same moment, as despite the bat-guy's  _ incredibly _ firm grip, Richie's sweaty hand begans to ooze out of its stupid fancy glove. 

"Hold on," says the guy, and the funniest part is that he actually sounds almost as scared as Richie feels, but by the time Richie starts to swing his other arm up it's already too late. He's falling, and this time nothing catches him but oceans of vile green. 

Richie's existence becomes flashes of color in blackness: _green, green all around him and seeping up under the helmet in trickles but which way is up anyway it must be where the current is flowing_ , and _banging from one side of the pipe to the other carried along on a horrifying torrent of green and purple and black sludge and effluvia and the smell is impossible to describe and sickeningly familiar_ , and _suddenly open air and a blur of tumbling treesskywatergroundtreessky and then a sharp slap of an impact and he's submerged again this time in water or mostly water slowly poisoning with everything that flushed him out_ , and _curved in the gleaming red surface is the reflection of a monster with dead white skin and red lips twisted in a horrible grimace that runs from eye to bloodshot eye_ , and finally _Mardi_ _Gras tie-dye flood of vomit swirling between what had previously been some very nice shoes._

Agonizingly, he drags himself up and over the embankment. Everything hurts, but especially his shoulder, and especially his hand, and especially his head, and… Everything, but yes, especially his head.

He can't die here, though. 

So he makes himself shuffle just a little further down the deserted road alongside the river, and a little further, and a little further, shedding his extra glove and his stupid, wet, clinging cape as he goes, and then a little further than that, until finally some sign of civilization looms large before him. 

The lock on the gas station bathroom door is broken already, which is convenient, though probably a contributing factor to how vile the inside of the bathroom is. Not more vile than him, so. 

With shaking, pale hands, he slips off the wet jacket, undoes the bow tie, leaves them in a small trail from the door to the sink where, at a loss for where else to start, he washes his hands. 

It's halfway through the third scrub, trying to get rid of the encroaching black under his nails, when the absurdity of his actions catches up to him, and a sharp giggle cuts through the buzzing of the overhead lights. 

Washing his hands, at a time like this, when the rest of him…

Well, he doesn't know what the rest of him. 

He's afraid to look, but something unavoidable draws his eyes upward, past the once-crisp and once-white shirt, now stained an uneven brown by the riot of colors it had been subjected to, up to… To… 

The thing above the sink is not a mirror. 

It can't be. 

What stares back at him isn't a reflection, it's a nightmare. It's white skin, like the flesh of a fresh corpse, it's red lips twisted hugely into a terrible grimace over too-long yellow teeth. 

It's a face he knows, but one one he can put a name to. It's a face he knows he's dreamed about, but not one he can dredge up any memory of having seen before. It's a face carved by fear and pain into the back of his eyelids and now, horribly, staring into his eyes, it begins to heave with laughter.


	2. CATWOMAN #0

Beverly comes back to herself and realizes there's no more tugging on her whip, no more fight left. A sudden shock of horror jolts through her and she scrambles backwards, coming up short against the closet doors with a clatter. For what seems like an eternity, she waits, but the twisted lump beside the bed doesn't move, doesn't so much as twitch. She can hear breathing, loud in the empty room, but as soon as it registers to her, she recognizes it as her own.

The only person left breathing is her. 

She won. 

The adrenaline seems to leave her in a rush, then, leaving Bev alone in the room with a dead body. The most unsettling feeling, by far, is an uncanny sense of familiarity in the stillness of his limbs, though everything else about the scene, from the size of him to the room to the most peculiar lack of any blood, seems somehow off. Different, though from what exactly, Bev can't recall. 

Suddenly, she can feel every one of her many aches: Most recent, her hands, cramped from where they'd pulled the whip tight around his windpipe; her jaw, where he'd hit her for the last time, right before she'd managed to secure her hold; her arms, from pulling herself up the side of what was once again  _ her _ house, from wrenching open the window to slip inside and lie in wait; her back, both the cuts from the window as it shattered on contact, and the bruises from where she'd made contact with the ground. Her head hurt, too, but there was a clarity that came with that pain, the knowledge that whatever limits Bev had had finally,  _ finally _ been exceeded. 

And now he's dead, and Bev, in her clawed gloves and her hodge-podge, tailored catsuit, isn't sure what to do with herself. She isn't sure what to do with  _ him _ , either, all 200 pounds of him.

A soft chirrup at the window jerks her attention upwards, and past her reflection she sees a pair of hooded green eyes, suspended in the darkness. Slowly, she drags herself to her feet and steps carefully across the room, giving his body a wide, wide berth. As soon as she's opened the window, the sleek black creature darts inside, as though concerned she might change her mind. 

"Hello baby," Bev murmurs as the cat swishes past her vinyl shins. "Are you hungry?" He'd never let her have any pets, and she'd always been afraid to subject anything she loved to him, but now he's dead, and Bev supposes that means she's free to become as much of a cat lady as she wants. 

While the cat sniffs at the body sprawled on the carpet, Bev goes to make her way to the kitchen, but before her glove can brush the doorknob, a sharp yowl catches her attention and she stops short. 

The cat has found a perch atop his still chest, and as Bev turns to look, it lowers its gaze, bends its head and, not neatly or quietly, it begins to bite, and chew. 

Bev can't look away and, more than that, she doesn't think she wants to. 

She watches, transfixed, as red begins to seep into the bland beige carpet, as the face she loved and hated is gradually torn into a morass of scarlet. 

The only thing that breaks her away from the sight is the soft sound of a plaintive mewl. When Bev looks back to the open window, she is met with a mass of fur and eyes, patient and unblinking. Some of them she recognizes, from her blurry half-awakening in the alleyway, surrounded by trash and broken glass, from walks around her own neighborhood. Some of them she does not. Some have collars. Most do not. All of them are staring at her, as though waiting for something. 

"Oh," she breathes, a smile beginning to creep its way across her face. "You're  _ all _ hungry, aren't you? Well come on, honey. There's enough for everyone."


	3. SCARECROW ANNUAL #8

The quiet, afterwards, is almost overwhelming. It's never completely silent in Gotham: Edward can hear distant sirens, maybe a screaming human voice mixed in with one of them, can hear a hollow, metallic dripping somewhere, and a clawed scurrying that he's still surprised to find is only mildly distasteful for him. The loudest sounds by far, right at this moment, are two sets of lungs slowly normalizing back down to a reasonable speed. 

Nothing like a few minutes ago, when the thumps and squeaks of the mattress under them and the vague embarrassment of the organic, rhythmic squelching were both drowned out almost entirely by their voices, harsh and low and almost frantic in ecstasy. 

_ Jesus. _

__ Edward scrubs a hand down his face, staring up into the empty darkness above, where there's only theoretically a ceiling somewhere. This part of the amusement park must have stored rides in the off season or something, he doesn't know. It's been a hideout every time he's been here, and honestly he doesn't know why it hasn't been found out yet. In the massive space, the sounds of their coupling had echoed absurdly. If there had been any henchmen on either team who hadn't known their bosses were fucking, well, they knew now. Given the way the type of person who became a henchman also loved to gossip, there's probably no henchmen left in Gotham who don't know. 

The shape beside him is still, breathing softly now. The chalk-white of his skin has always made Edward think he ought to be cold, but he always radiates an almost feverish heat. Maybe the old Eddie would have taken that as a sign, might have demanded tests, lab results, but Edward, unburdened by the fears of his past life, doesn't give a shit. The idea of taking the Joker into a clinic for STD testing is undeniably hilarious, though, and Edward snorts quietly as he turns his head to tell the man himself.

"Hey–" Edward comes up short, biting his lip even as the sound of his own voice bounces back to him. On his back beside Edward, the Joker's face is angled slightly toward him, his narrow lips parted but unsmiling, relaxed. He's let his hair grow out too long again, and a curl of it has twisted its way into his open mouth. Pushing himself up on one elbow, Edward reaches out and tucks it back behind his ear without thinking of the gesture. 

This isn't… 

It's unprecedented. 

For all the times they've slept together, they've never actually fallen asleep in front of each other, too reasonably leery of a knife in the back to trust another person of their particular lifestyle. But there he was, snoring softly, dark eyelashes brushing his cheekbones. In the near-perfect dark, you almost couldn't tell there was anything odd about his coloring, just that he was very pale, his lips very dark. But they always had been, hadn't they, even though age and whatever else had happened had robbed them of their childish fullness. 

_ Wait… _

Eddie tries to grasp at the flash of memory before it can flutter away from him, but almost as soon as he's put words to it, it's gone again, leaving him feeling oddly alone in the massive warehouse, staring down at his lover and wondering, not for the first time, who he really is


	4. DOCTOR FATE #0

The _click_ at the other end carries with it an odd, hollow finality. Mike sets his phone down, carefully, and tries as hard as he can to ignore the voice whispering to him that all he's doing is bringing his friends back to their deaths.

_It's just It_ , he tries to remind himself. In the corner of his eye, the ritual vessel sticks out among the piles of his research like an accusation. _It's just It. We can do this_. 

If only he'd managed to get ahold of Richie, things might not seem so dire, but as far as Mike can tell, Richie dropped out of UC Berkeley and off the face of the Earth. There were possible hits in Opal City and Gotham, but even those were more than 15 years old, and with some reluctance and a deep sense of sorrow, Mike had eventually given Richie up as a lost cause. 

At least he wasn't a _mass murderer_ , though.

"Jesus, Eddie," Mike mutters under his breath for at least the hundredth time since last November. He's had Google alerts set up for all of them for years, and as a consequence has learned more fashion news than he'll ever need, but when Eddie's name had pinged last year it was like the floor dropped out from under him. Mike wasn't a major superhero fanatic, not like some people, but his research and his collection sometimes ran in parallel lines with them, and really who _hadn_ ' _t_ heard of the Scarecrow? Sure, he's no Joker, but still.

"Jesus, Eddie."

And now Mike had just basically invited Eddie to break out of Arkham Asylum and come to Derry. 

Too unsettled to sit still, Mike pushes back from his desk and strides across his attic room without any particular plan. As always, though, he finds himself inevitably drawn toward the same artifact. Unconsciously, he stretches out a hand, but stops himself just shy of its burnished golden surface. It's an option, but it's a last option.

When he'd first found the helmet online, he'd thought it was a replica. There were plenty of them out there, after all. There was something about the terseness of the listing, though, that had made him go back and sift through his closed tabs until he could bring it up for a closer look.

**'DR. FATE HELMET,'** it had read. **'ESTATE SALE. GENUINE ARTICLE. NO QUESTIONS ANSWERED. DO** **NOT** **WEAR.'**

As always, the metal is warm under his hands, almost welcoming. Mike has, so far, not tried the helmet on, but the same part of him that had sung out at touching the ritual vessel, the part that had demanded he take it, resonates with the helmet. There is no doubt in his mind that the helmet has the power to defeat It. More than that, rolling its warmth between his palms, Mike can feel that the helmet _want_ s to, desperately. 

_Look at the chaos the beast wreaks, Michael. Look at the horror. Take me to It's home and we will tear It to pieces._

Startled, Mike drops the helmet with a _clang_ and backs away. The voice follows, not angry but disappointed in him, and terribly patient. The worst part is, he knows it's the truth. Doctor Fate could end It today, and all Mike would have to give up in exchange is his own existence.

Instead, he's bringing his best friends home to die. 

_Coward_ , the voice whispers to him. 

**Author's Note:**

> Graphic Violence: Bev strangles her abusive husband and cats show up to eat his body. The actual strangulation happens before the story, and only a bit of dinnertime is described, and not in huge detail. 
> 
> This is (clearly? Maybe?) not one specific version of DC canon.  
> I invite you to Google what Joker's costume looks like in his Red Hood origin, because I promise you I exaggerated it not at all, it's very bad.   
> Bev is mostly Pfeiffer and a little bit, please forgive me, Berry. I don't have a good grasp of Bev as a person because I still have not read the book and don't intend to, and I haven't been mainlining stories where she's a headliner.  
> I remember vaguely the New 52 killed off Kent Nelson and had someone who didn't want to take over, so what if he sold the helmet on eBay instead and it went to someone good and smart and deserving? Nabu can only talk to Mike when he's holding the helmet in this version I just made up because this is my stolen sandbox, otherwise the voice is Pennywise Bullshit.  
> I think I'll get around to Deadman chapters at some point and I'll change the summary then. We'll see.  
> Maybe!  
> Once again I am whollyunnecessary on Tumblr and I don't post about shipping things or Stephen King but I DO post about Batman. Love me that Batman.


End file.
